Valve: MS and Yahoo rejected Steam

Valve's VP Doug Lombardi explains that, once upon a time, the company …

Given the success of Valve's Steam digital distribution service, everyone seems to be jumpingon thebandwagon. But once upon a time, when Steam was still a gleam in Valve VP Doug Lombardi's eye, it was a tough sell. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lombardi revealed that before building the service itself, Valve tried to sell the idea to some big-name companies like Microsoft and Yahoo, but it was rejected every time.

"You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam," Lombardi explained. "We went around to everybody and asked 'Are you guys doing anything like this?' And everyone was like 'That's a million miles in the future...We can't help you.'"

So it looks like Valve was much more forward-thinking then some of its competition, and we now see Microsoft lagging behind Steam with its own Games For Windows service. Given the state of both GFW and Xbox Live Arcade, and how they differ from Steam in terms of both pricing and service, you have to wonder how Steam might have ended up if Microsoft was in control.